Book Description

Working Women in America: Split Dreams studies the dynamic growth in women's labor force participation with an eye to understanding what the actual experience of working women is today. The book offers a broad perspective on the diversity of women and their work, and it raises the need torethink ideas concerning work, family and gender roles in order to help solve women's work and family lie dilemmas. It utilizes a structural approach to rethink these ideas and resolve these dilemmas. The book's central argument is that to understand the position of women in the work world, one mustanalyze women's situation in the economy, the family, education, and the polity -- in short, within society as large -- because these various social institutions connect, reflect and influence one another. The authors begin with an historical perspective on women at work which recognizes theimportance of the economic and legal dimensions of women's work lives. This broad perspective lays the groundwork to a further examination of the particular work situations of women and a recognition of the fact that diversity of women's work experiences are formed by racial, class, and otherinequalities (sexual, age, etc.).